Tips From Former Smokers: About CDC's Campaign

Why it exists

Tobacco use is still the leading preventable cause of death and disease in the United States.

• Cigarette smoking kills more than 480,000 Americans a year.
• 16 million Americans live with at least one serious smoking-related disease.
• For every person who dies of smoking, at least 30 live with a serious smoking-related illness.
• About 28.8 million U.S. adults still smoke.
• Smoking cost the country more than $600 billion in 2018.

Real people, real stories

In March 2012, CDC launched Tips From Former Smokers® (Tips®) — the first federally funded national tobacco education campaign. It profiles real people of many backgrounds living with the long-term effects of smoking and secondhand smoke — and the toll on their families.

Health problems in Tips ads, caused or worsened by smoking or secondhand smoke:

• asthma; Buerger's disease;
• cancers — colorectal, head and neck, kidney, lung, oral and throat;
• COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease); diabetes;
• dual use — smoking cigarettes and using another tobacco product;
• gum disease; heart disease; peripheral artery disease; stroke;
• HIV complications; depression and anxiety;
• preterm birth; vision loss and blindness.

Goals, messages and audiences

Goals:

1. Build awareness of the immediate damage from smoking and secondhand smoke.
2. Encourage adults who smoke to quit, and make free help available.
3. Encourage smokers not to smoke around others, and nonsmokers to protect themselves and their families.

Key messages:

• Smoking does immediate damage that can lead to long-term health problems.
• For every smoking death, at least 30 people live with a serious smoking-related illness.
• Now is the time to quit — free help at 1-800-QUIT-NOW.

Audiences: mainly adults 18 through 54 who smoke and have low socioeconomic status; also families, health care professionals and faith communities.

Tips is for everyone

To reduce health disparities, Tips aims to widen the reach, representation and accessibility of its quit messages, and awareness of free help. It:

• builds evidence-based messages, featuring people who reflect the diversity of those living with smoking-related conditions;
• places ads where they reach communities with high smoking rates and populations hardest hit by tobacco;
• works with health care professionals to help patients quit;
• offers materials free or at reduced cost to state and local programs and community groups;
• translates its materials, uses culturally appropriate language, and makes materials accessible for people with disabilities.

Why it works

Research shows hard-hitting media campaigns help people quit. Emotional campaigns with graphic images of smoking's effects raise quitline calls and website visits — and those effects fade quickly when the campaigns stop. Tips is built on research from several U.S. states and other countries, plus extensive testing.

What testing found: most smokers already knew smoking can kill, but fear of dying didn't move them to quit. What did was seeing how hard it is to live with a chronic, disabling smoking-related disease — and imagining its effect on their families.

Impact: from 2012 to 2018, CDC estimates that more than 16.4 million people who smoke tried to quit, and about 1 million quit for good, because of Tips. Tips impact and results.

Free help to quit

• By phone: 1-800-QUIT-NOW; in Spanish, 1-855-DÉJELO-YA; in Chinese, 1-800-838-8917; in Korean, 1-800-556-5564; in Vietnamese, 1-800-778-8440.
• By text: text QUITNOW to 333888 (message and data rates may apply); the quitSTART app.
• Online: Quit Smoking (en español); Smokefree.gov (en español); Asian Smokers' Quitline.

Sources

Based on "About the Campaign," Tips From Former Smokers, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; a work of the United States government in the public domain. Its figures draw on the 2014 Surgeon General's report, MMWR and other studies cited there. The page's quoted comments from members of the public, its illustrated avatars and a Smokefree.gov banner are not reproduced.